FaerieKin at LEAF
Our part-time studio assistant Nara Hari Dasi is a talented performer and costumer who also works with the wonderful FaerieKin.
Imagine a band of singing, stiltwalking fairies wandering through woodland glades and festivals of happy people. To wander with them, hear their tales and receive a fairy blessing is a joyful experience.
FaerieKin musician Noah in OA antlers
We have made various costume pieces and puppets for the troupe over the last three years as well as occasionally performing as “ground elves”.
This spring they brought forth their grandest vision yet – a celebration of bees. They sprinkled environmental education in with their songs and stiltwalking, dance and elaborate costumes, invoking the powerful magic of bees in our world. Did you know that cross-pollination helps at least 30 percent of the world’s crops and 90 percent of our wild plants to thrive?
Those costumes were made primarily by our Nara (Jennifer also made several of the flower hats). The big bee abdomens are hoop skirts! Two of them are sewn together, hem to hem, to make the egg shape and then painted. But the thing we were most excited about was the headdresses!
We often say how Organic Armor is well suited to performance but that’s not just via the high-end custom pieces we make. Directly in the hands of dance troupes, fire spinners, theater companies etc. these materials and techniques could be amazingly versatile – creating lightweight, inexpensive, and relatively quick pieces for shows. They might be rougher than what we do but good for the stage.
This is one of the reasons we are in pre-production mode right now for our instructional video series.
FaerieKin as bees, photo by Armin Weise
Nara demonstrated how versatile the methods are with her bee headdresses. She started with a bicycle helmet – a comfortable rigid structure already rigged with straps. She used padded bra cups for the large eyes. On this base she used the usual Organic Armor mix of rubber, cloth and cords, as well as faux fur, fabricating six semi-realistic and very wearable honey bee heads.
Nara in her bee headdress
Paul gave her construction advice along the way and they both stayed up almost all night painting them before the LEAf festival. The response to the costumes and the show has been phenomenal!
FaerieKin at LEAF, photo by The Asheville Citizen Times
We charge a lot for our work and it’s well worth it for the masterful skills and attention to detail we put into it. But we are excited to see what can be done with these materials and techniques by other performers and costumers. We hope to have our first instructional video done by the end of the summer.